


The Silent Treatment

by sageofchaos



Category: Legend of Zelda (1989 Cartoon)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageofchaos/pseuds/sageofchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And its not enough to tell me that you care//</i><br/><i>When we both know that words are empty air...</i> </p><p>An ambush and an unlucky zap of magic sends Link and Zelda to a strange part of the Underworld, and they need to fight their way back out.  Things aren't all right with Link, though Zelda hasn't been in the best state either.  And there are Redead.  And Link's laundry still stinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Treatment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [professor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/professor/gifts).



“Aha!  I know what this dinner needs!”  King Harkinian suddenly announced, with his goblet held high. “A toast to Link!”  

The graceful princess Zelda startled at that, snapped out of her own thoughts and nearly dropping her fork in surprise.  She blinked and looked around at the table, but it was still only herself and her father sitting in the banquet hall. “Excuse me?”  

“Link!  The lad has done us a great service, taking the Triforce of Wisdom into his safekeeping.  While on his new adventure, even!  But we know it is in good hands.”

“Oh.  Yes.” Zelda leaned back against her chair, and sighed.  That had happened nearly three months ago, and still nobody would shut up about it.  “You don’t need to toast that, Father.  Besides, you’ve already toasted to three other causes tonight.”  

“I have?”  His bright red nose wriggled with thought.  “Well, what of you, Zelda?  You haven’t toasted to anything.  You haven’t even touched your wine.”  

“I have a hard time relaxing, Father, when we don’t know for sure that Ganon is gone.”

“All the more reason to drink, I would say,” the king said, taking another long drink from his goblet. “Ganon is gone enough.  We haven’t seen even one of his creatures in over six months.”  

She pushed around her food with her fork, already familiar with this song and dance.  “So just because we aren’t under an immediate threat, I should spend these days in idleness and a half-intoxicated state.”.

“ _Yes!_   So you deserve!” her father half-roared. “You deserve it twice as much as any man here.  Aye, you got sick and tired and led an attack on Ganon, and we all bombed over that darned Underworld entrance fifteen times over!  That was the mightiest fleet of Dodongos to walk Hyrule, I’m sure!”  And then her father got too excited again, spun his chair around, and started riding the wooden Dodongo surrogate around while making declarations that he actually hadn’t made at the battle itself.  

Zelda pressed her peas flat with her fork, watching them split and then ooze apart.  She had no appetite for alcohol, and nearly as little desire for her food.  The only food that caught her attention was an orange among the arrangement of fruit, but just because of a memory she had of it. She didn’t even want to look at an orange, much less eat it.  

She started into another long sigh, but suddenly realized that her father had stopped his over-enthusiastic display. The king crossed his arms over the back of the chair and leveled his gaze at Zelda.  His nose glowed red, but his eyes were the watery blue as they always were when he was concerned for her. 

“Perhaps I should speak to the King of Fairies again,” her father said.  “I’m sure he doesn’t have this much trouble making his daughter happy.”

Zelda shook her head, and even made a small, unconvincing smile.  “Don’t misunderstand, father.  I want for nothing.”

“Nonsense, there has to be something even a princess wants.”  The wrinkles of his forehead wiggled around as he tried to think.  “What of some new dresses?  You used to like the dresses. You used to draw out little designs of exactly what you wanted, and the seamstresses would make them for you.  Do you remember that, Zelda?”

“I can remember it perfectly well.”

“Now the seamstresses complain because all they have to work on are curtains and riding slacks for you.  At least when Link was around, there was no shortage of mends to make on the socks, the pajamas, the pillowcases...”

Mentioning her childhood versus herself now was an unfair comparison, Zelda thought.  When she was little, she didn’t know better but to wear those dresses, and thought only of stupid things like dances and horses and charming, heroic princes who didn’t exist.  As for Link...

Well, she didn’t even want to go there right now.

“It’s a matter of utility,” she said, plainly. She picked up her knife and thought to at least go through the motions of slicing up the meat in front of her. “A princess can’t defend her kingdom in skirts, especially in times this bad.  And that might not change, even when I’m the Queen.”

“Bad?  My daughter, what has gotten into you?  You are so worked up, but Ganon is gone, and I am nowhere near the grave!"  The king chuckled jovially, and elbowed her, as if she had just been joking.  “Besides, what about a strapping young king to support you?”

“There may be no such person for me,” she muttered.

His thick eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Zelda?”

She put down her silverware, her roast half-carved, and excused herself from the table.  “I’m sorry.  I believe I have an appointment to keep.  Sleep well, Father.”  

The clattering of her boots were too loud in the hall, and even at her brisk pace, she could not leave her worried father’s presence fast enough.  She would have rather just vanished completely.

\-------

Zelda slipped away from the castle town completely a day later, making her way towards the forest quickly, though not unseen.  Some farmers on the way wished her well, with smiles and waves.  Last time they tried bowing to her, she very calmly but sternly reprimanded them, telling them to regard her as any young woman when she was outside of town.  When she went to the forest she usually didn`t want to be reminded of her status, and besides, there was no telling where the ears of Ganon`s minions may lie.

The forest didn’t ask her why she was in a bad mood, or why she didn’t wear dresses, and it usually didn’t remind her of past danger and adventure.  She even had a fresh apple to eat, and a stash of bows and arrows stowed near a meadow clearing that she was itching to practice with. 

The deepest realm of the forest was just ahead of her, but she paused as she perceived an alien sound for this part of the forest.  Hooves clapped at the earth, galloping in a rhythm that it did not suit a deer, but a horse.  A brown mare galloped at a sprint through the forest path, unattended.  As it happened, Zelda wouldn’t have misremembered this horse for the world. 

“Catherine?”  Completely counter to self-preservation, Zelda threw her arms open in the path of the horse.  “Stop!” 

Catherine didn’t stop immediately, but veered to the side, causing the horse to slow down just enough so that Zelda could grab at her saddle and bit.  The horse's saddle swung free, dangling off the side of the horse unsecured.  Zelda got the mare under control, at least enough to so she wouldn’t hurt herself.  Catherine was shaking her head and braying anxiously, striking the dirt with her hooves over and again. 

"Where's Link?"  Zelda shook her head as soon as she said it.  "Nevermind, stupid question."  She tore the lopsided saddle off of the horse and grabbed the only satchel still attached to it, and slung it over her own shoulder.  At a glance she saw that his slingshot was in it - good.

“It’s not safe, girl.  Get back to the castle.”  The horse didn’t acknowledge Zelda’s command, of course, until she got a sound smack in the rear.  Not long afterwards, Zelda heard a low rumble coming from the same direction Catherine ran in on.  Zelda herself found the low branch of a nearby tree, climbed, and only had to wait a few minutes before a small group of people passed over the crest of the road and under her tree. 

They wore oversized, filthy cloaks which protected them from the sun completely, and shambled forward at an unnatural gait.  She had no idea what would cause so many people to walk like that, not until she noticed their feet.  They shuffled along on bones, not skin and flesh. 

“Stalfos?”   It was a small band of Stalfos, certainly few enough that even some angry farmers could batter them into chalk.  That wasn’t the problem.  Zelda stood up on her branch and tried to get a better view of their path.  “But where are they coming from?”

A pink flash shot out from behind a tree.  The marching Stalfos lost half their number in a matter of seconds, and the rest were zapped away before they could even creak around.  Zelda dropped down from her branch and chased after the source of the Sword Beams, into a thrush of bushes.

She remembered he was quick and sure-footed in the forest, but she was faster. She leapt for him and grabbed him around the knees, and he fell like a sack of potatoes.  She hadn’t mistaken him for anyone else, not in that green tunic, hat, and that sword of his.

“Link, you better tell me exactly what is going on right now.”  Zelda whispered, and grabbed him by the collar before he could worm away.  “Why were there Stalfos hanging around here?” 

He gestured with his hands wildly, though she couldn’t follow it at all.  Nothing except for his finger over his lips and a _shhh!_

“Too late!” a strange, hollow voice belted out, and a large creature with bony hands appeared from behind a great oak. “I’ve found you, hero!” 

This Stalfos stood taller than any man, and seemed nearly as broad as the tree truck he stood by.  Even by the daylight, his eyes glowed bright gold under the veiled darkness of his hood, which was cleaner than the version his foot soldiers were wearing, and decked in fine jewels.  Found out, Zelda and Link both got to their feet.  She didn’t miss the side-eyed grimace that Link shot her.  

“General Daeder, at your disservice.”  He bowed on creaky bones, and his skull rattled and cocked lopsided, like it was lose in its socket.  He cracked and ground his skull back into place before he addressed them again.   “Well met, Princess and Hero, but I’m afraid short-met as well.” 

“For you, maybe,” she said, and discreetly tried to find the slingshot in the satchel. Beside her, Link had his sword at the ready, but for whatever reason wasn’t jumping in on the insult wagon.  “How about you and your walking xylophones go back to wherever you came from, before we make you?” 

“Can’t do that, princess.  One of you has something I want.”  He lifted his bony hands high.  “And by the undead that I command, the Triforce will be claimed in the name of Ganon!” 

“You can try, rotbrains, but you’ll never drag me to the Underworld.”  She drew the slingshot taut and aimed it at him.  “I’ll fight you to the very end.”  

“That’s true; dragging you sounds like a bad idea.”  In the General’s bony hand, a ball of pink light appeared.  “Let’s zap you right to his guest room.” 

He pitched the ball at Link, who hadn’t anticipated the attack, and just gracelessly bashed it with his sword.  The ball soared up into the sky, but his sword rattled in his hand, reverberating like a glass at an opera house. It might break if he tried that again, she thought, but regardless of that he raised his sword as the General launched another pink zapping ball.   

Zelda didn’t even think.  Her hand darted forward, to Link’s wrist, and pulled him back towards her.  Her other hand lifted towards the General, and she called forth a spell, a crystalline blue magic she had wanted to be like a mirror, to reflect the magic.

 _No!_ Link yelled, or maybe he just mouthed it.  He shoved her mid-spell in an attempt to get her out of the path of the attack, but she lost her focus, and the pink zapping spell collided with her half-baked deflection spell.  A pale violet light washed over them-

-And they reappeared in a pitch black void, and already falling. 

Zelda scrambled for purchase against wall, grabbing at rocks, lanterns, planks, anything that stood out to her, but she fell too fast.  She couldn’t see Link, or hear him.   

She landed in soft, doughy mire, hitting it and sinking hip-deep immediately.  A faint purple smoke wafted around her face, turning her guts and instantaneously weakening her limbs.  She remembered reaching out, and someone grabbing her arm, and...  

Then, nothing else for a long while.

\-----

A gentle rocking slowly lulled Zelda back from sleep, with such ease that she stared upwards for a while before she decided that she was awake.  She wasn’t in the Evil Jar, that was for sure.  Oddly enough, she seemed to be on a boat.   

Slowly, she found her bearings, and decided to try standing up.  The deck of the boat swayed and shifted, but instead of a rolling ocean horizon, the boat ran parallel to cave walls, with a dark ceiling very high above them.  Then she saw Link, looking over the side of the boat.  Zelda followed him, though her bandaged hands stung as she held the railing for support.

Being on a boat, Zelda naturally assumed they were floating on an underground reservoir stream.  But this river wasn’t full of water at all, but a steely grey mist, with a rolling, turbulent violet energy just a layer below.  Link’s hand grabbed her shoulder, as if he thought she would fall in, but she pushed it off.

“I know what miasma looks like," she said. But the rest of this place looked absolutely nothing like the dungeons of Ganon’s realm that they knew.  “The spell half-worked.  We got zapped into the Underworld, but not in the right part.  But how did we get on a ship?”

Link pointed back to the dark tunnel which the boat was pulling away from.  He made a few gestures, one like lifting her up, another walking, another like climbing a ladder.   

“Why aren’t you giving me a straight answer?  Are you being difficult?” 

 He shook his head, _no._   Link pointed to his mouth, and then pantomimed a choking motion. 

“You can’t talk.  So you got sick?” Zelda guessed. “Or cursed?”

He nodded after her second guess, and flapped his arms quickly. 

“A Cucco did it?” 

He stared at her, and then just waved just one hand, _nevermind_.  Zelda was starting to think she had a better time trying to talk to Catherine.

“Okay.  What about the Stalfos general?  Why was he following you?”    

Link swung his arms around and tried to relate to her what had happened, though it seemed like being on mute didn’t stop him from being a braggart.  Bored after the first five zapping pantomimes, Zelda looked down at herself, to see what of her supplies she still had.  Her boots were gone, sunk in the mire they landed in, and Link’s baggy, disgusting old boots were over her feet and calves.  She sniffed inside, and made a face at the smell which came out. 

“Still having trouble with your laundry,” she muttered in the middle of his theatrics.  She tied some spare cord around the knees of the boots so they wouldn’t fall off of her.   Link, on the other hand, had found a new pair of boots for himself, which were in turn slightly too big for him.  New was a relative term - he hadn’t cleaned it of all of its cakey dust, but it was leather with a metal toe-cover, and seemed to have some vague embellishments on them.  They looked stupid and gaudy, which was perfectly his style.  Her hand felt around her to see if she could find her satchel, but ran into an unlit, iron-worked lamp instead.

“Oh.”  She recognized the lantern.  It must have been something that she grabbed as they had fallen.  Some discarded matches littered the deck around the lantern, evidence that Link already tried to use it.   Zelda thought that was unusual, because as soon as she lifted up the lamp, it glowed with a soft blue light.

This alarmed Link, apparently.  He halted his story and pointed at the lamp like it just sprouted eyes. 

“I honestly cannot tell if it is more annoying to have you on mute than not,” she said.  She felt subtle electricity through her wrist and through her palm which held the lamp, and recognized what was happening.  “Link, it’s a magic lamp.”

He eased closer, then gave it a quick rub with his elbow and danced back.

Zelda turned her shoulders and her new lamp away from him.  “Idiot.  Not that kind.  What would a vagrant like you even want?”

Apparently he wasn’t totally silenced, because she heard a near obscene lip smacking behind her.

“Ughn!”  She threw her hair and set her chin up.  “I’m not looking at you.  Not until we’re off this ship and back onto safe ground.”

 

——————

 

If the crypt the boat took them to was really part of the Underworld, then it certainly wasn’t of Ganon’s design.  The traps were far too clever and devious to be his. 

Zelda's drew ragged breaths as she ran, her eyes straining against the near darkness and her whole body ready to jolt at the next odd sound.  Her senses had been on a constant state of high alert ever since they left the ghost ship an hour ago and nearly got squashed by the first large block they saw.  The loud grinding of rusted gears and sheer luck saved them much, much more often than their reflexes or intuition could have.  Link nearly barreled ahead of her in the corridor, and this time intuition served her.

"No," she warned, and grabbed the nape of his tunic.  He stopped and looked back at her in annoyance, at least until a guillotine snapped shut an inch from his face.  Link stared at his own reflection in the silver blade for a moment, and then fell ungraciously onto his backside, his eyes rolling.  _I can't do this._

"We have to, hero," she said, hating saying the words just as much as he hated to hear them.  He started waving his hands and shaking his head, but she seized his collar again and dragged him upright.  The old guillotine started to creak up back into its starting point again, and they ran under it before it could fall. 

A band of about ten Stalfos appeared suddenly in a parallel corridor, marching in the same direction as Link and Zelda.  The new threat startled her so badly that she gasped aloud.  She cursed herself and slapped her hands over her mouth, all too late. Bones clattered as they snapped their skulls left to look at her, then raised their clubs and gave chase.  More guillotines ahead, and more of those long-cutting crevasses flanked them on either side of their path, with the walkable ledges opposite of the empty voids too far away to even think about as an alternative path. 

Link pointed to a series of iron grates just ahead, and among them, a barred door.  With his and her combined frantic strength, they pulled the rusty iron door free and ran through it, slamming in the faces of the Stalfos just in time.  They even had a moment to catch their breath.

 _Rumble rumble_. 

A cold dread washed through Zelda and Link alike.  She had forgotten about the traps. 

Her arms shot out, pressing against the iron bars flanking them on either side.  Solid.  The door they came through had Stalfos hands sticking out of it.  And on the fourth side she realized there was absolutely nothing at all, just another one of those crevasses.

"There's no more room!"  She looked up at the shaking granite block that all but had their names on it.  “Link!”  

The cable holding the block in place snapped.  She couldn't move, but Link grabbed her shoulder and pulled her forward - leapt out from the ledge and into sheer nothingness.  

She shrieked in terror, clawing at Link’s tunic, while he screamed and grabbed both at his hat and a handful of the back of her blouse. The vertigo pulled at their guts, almost worse than the feeling she got when she looked down.  Miles and miles of blackest darkness was all that was below them.  She closed her eyes and waited for her death, impossibly far from home, where nobody would ever know what happened to her.

But it was not forthcoming.  As light as leaves on a breeze, they glided an easy twenty feet from the ledge they started at.  Before she could realize they were not dropping, her boots hit something hard (but there was nothing to see?) and the two of them tumbled forward, over thin air, until they hit the wide ledge that should have been unreachable.   

Link hit the wall, then grabbed and clung to it for dear life, not realizing he embraced a dusty skeleton in the process.   The princess's legs just failed her completely, and she slumped onto her knees.  After a few moments of gasping, Zelda crawled back to the edge of the grey stone cliff, and put her hand through what she thought was clear air.  Her palm hit a solid body though, what felt to be glass.  That was the hard surface she tripped on, which saved them in the last few feet.

“But we weren’t walking on anything to start with.”  It wasn't her imagination – the falling block that was supposed to kill them was ten yards away, much farther than even Link could jump.  How... 

She was jolted by Link tapping insistently on her shoulder.  Annoyed, she only meant to spare him a glance, and saw that he pointed down at the ankles of his new boots.  Where it had been caked over in dust, now two white wings twitched, covered in only slightly grimy feathers.

She grabbed his ankle and threw him off balance, but it was for the sake of understanding exactly what had happened.  Zelda forced his foot just slightly over the ledge.  He freaked out, windmilling his arms, but she saw clearly what happened - the boots rippled over the bare edge, creating something for him to at least glide on temporarily. 

"Amazing!"  She let go of his leg and he decided to back away out of her reach this time. “I think those may be our ticket out of here.” 

Now that she had some of her focus back, Zelda thought about her lantern, and invested some more of her magic into it to give them a brighter radius of light.  The ledge they landed on, though made of earth, seemed like it was a true walkway at one point.  There was even a door in the distance, and no traps at all in sight.  She stood up and braced her hand against the cave wall, and they continued forward on this decidedly more relaxing route.    

\---- 

Eventually they found a relatively dry room to camp in, which was a sweet deal as it was also free of monsters, guillotines, and miasma.  Link busied himself knocking over old jars, while Zelda tried to get a real fire going.  He was just being so damn distracting.  He would roll the jars over on their sides, and then kick them like balls towards the wall.  He threw both of his arms up when they broke, and then pick through the pieces for crusty old rupees. 

“Seriously, Link.”  She stared back at her fire pit, as if she hadn’t been looking at him, and again tried to get the lantern flame to catch on the dried roots again.  “At a time like this, you are collecting more of your grimy old trash?"

He found some more pots up on a ledge, and in what she was sure was a deliberate move, swung his sword and shattered the pots all in one blow. 

"I bet none of that will even be useful.  Tell me, does the word _kleptomaniac_ mean anything to you?" 

He flapped his hands to pantomime a _blah blah blah_ , like the overgrown child he was.

Zelda jabbed her only-smoking bonfire with a stick again.  "Just quit it.”

He pocketed one last filthy item, an old glass jar into his holding bag, before sticking his tongue out at her.  He swaggered to the side of the fire pit, and sat down to look over his new prizes.

Maybe Link enjoyed adventures into gross places like these, but she could feel the shocks and surprises wearing her down.  He seemed to be brimming with energy, while she felt the opposite.  Zelda felt close to succumbing to her frustration, but made herself calm down, and think of something positive. 

“Well.  The only good thing about all of this is that my father and the city should be safe.  Since enemy thinks we are missing, they won’t bother with the town.”

Ganon’s goons only attacked the castle town because of the Triforce - her being there or not shouldn’t make the difference. Knowing that, Link connected his forefingers and his thumbs, creating the shape of a triangle, and then tilted his head as in _what?_

“The Triforce of Wisdom is still at the castle, yes.”  She stuck another dry twig into her lantern, and tried once more to get the flame to take on the bundle of sticks.  “But it’s hidden away so that nobody knows it is there.  And I told everyone that you had taken the Triforce with you.”  

The fire finally caught on, going from a smolder to small licks of orange flame.     

Link still stared at her, so she elaborated.  “You were leaving my father and me, and weren’t going to be useful in defending the castle anymore.  It was a clever way to throw the enemy, if they returned.” 

When she looked at his face, she almost didn’t catch onto his change in mood - for a moment she thought he just looked focused.  His anger was usually a flash in the pan, and he held a grudge like a child.  But his dark eyes now stared right at her, brow furrowed, and his face was blank of emotion.  He made one gesture, his thumb jerked back at himself.

Zelda crossed her arms.  “Maybe it wasn’t the best thing for _you_ , but it was the best thing for the kingdom.  Besides, Ganon wouldn’t be able to find you, because nobody knows where you went off to.”

Three gestures now.  He indicated himself with his thumb again, his two fingers pantomimed walking, and finally he jabbed his forefinger at her.

“That’s not why at all,” she said, her voice rising.  “If Ganon came back and attacked, which he clearly is, then at least the first place they wouldn’t go and attack is a city full of my people.  Did you think of them when you left, _hero_?”  

It was worse that he could not speak, because she had only his stark expressions to take as answers.  He pressed his fingers to his brow and shook his head.  Fire be damned, Zelda stood up and away from it, and extended her hand to him. 

“Give me your sword then.  If you can’t stay and be a hero for Hyrule, I will do it.  If you don’t want it, then every single oath you took to protect Hyrule, I would take on for myself!” 

Her voice cracked, she felt as if rocks scraped at her throat as she spoke.  “And I would, if I could.  But I’m not enough to save my people.  I can’t protect them alone, no matter how badly I want to.  Do you have any idea what that's like?”

He didn’t move, looking down at the budding flames.  She withdrew her hand, and took another step away from the fire.

"Forget about it.  I'll just meet you ahead," she said.  Her eyes started to sting all the sudden, and she needed to get some air, alone.  Without a further glance back at him, Zelda grabbed her small satchel and ran out of the room.

\----

The next room was empty, and the next as well.  Zelda made good on her promise to get ahead, jogging through a number of rooms and dim corridors before her thoughts started to slow down and she could clearly think about what had happened.   Her arms were still wrapped around her chest, clutching her elbows.  Why had he gotten so angry?  Her idea to pretend he had the Triforce hadn't been personal.  She had just been so mad that he would rather flounce around in distant forests than-

She exhaled a deep breath, and leaned against the wall with her elbow between her forehead and the cool earth. 

Her mind wandered to the Triforce of Power, probably still with Ganon.  If only she had that, then she would never have to fear for her country ever again - but no, even her heart knew that wasn't the right answer.  That symbol of power had very nearly fallen into her hands a few times, but the last time it would have been in exchange for her free will and her hand in marriage to Ganon.  That was one nightmare she tried not to think about too often.  And yet, she still sometimes regretted that she couldn't have used it as a chance to get closer to the Triforce of Power.

On the other hand, Link never had acted remorseful in the past when she lost the opportunity to grab it.  He had always grabbed her first and pulled her away, every time, making sure that she was safe.  She got frustrated at losing it, but he would boast and brag about how good of a rescue he made, without a second thought to the artifact. 

Perhaps Link genuinely had thought Ganon wasn't a threat when he left on his adventure, or he didn't understand her reasons for objecting to it.  Or just didn’t understand how she felt. 

"I messed up," Zelda said aloud.  She rubbed her hands over her face and wondered what she would say to him that wouldn't make him hate her more than he probably already did.  Maybe she needed to go back and find him.  Maybe she could even bring with her a nice jar for him to break, and he'd forget all about the stupid thing.

Actually, she had just been joking about that last thought, but when she turned away from the wall and actually cast her lamplight around the room she had wandered into, there actually seemed to be exactly what she thought about.  A dirt-colored jar sat in the center of the room.

No.  There was something that had looked jar-like, but now it was rising upright.  It was humanoid, but far from human, with a rough, rotted brown skin and unfolding its long, thin limbs.  Worst, it had hollows for eyes and a gaping mouth, all featureless as if a bag had been drawn over a human face.  Her eyes went wide as she recognized the creature from one of her books all the way back at her castle library.

Redead.

_SCREEEEEEEEEE_

The shock of realizing that it was a Redead was nothing compared to the actual, physical frozen terror that tore through her every nerve.  She wanted to run, but couldn't even turn her head to the side.  She watched as it dragged forward at an inching slow pace, but compared to how she couldn't move at all, it was terribly fast.  Her fingers rattled violently as it approached, closer and closer.

The lamp clattered out of her trembling hands.  The blue flame danced in the jar, and instantaneously the zombie shuddered away from it and put distance between itself and the fire.  In its fear, the creature gave out another one of those horrid screams.  Zelda shivered head-to-toe from the deathly cry, but the scream didn’t seize up her nerves like the last one had.  She shuddered and found herself able to step backwards freely.  The Redead must be too far away from her.  It seemed to know this, and started to drag itself forward again, but not in Zelda’s direction this time.           

She felt Link’s eyes on her, and realized that he was there, had followed her into the room.  Now that she had gotten out of the monster’s range, he was the closest one to the Redead, at only ten feet away.  He held his sword in hand, but he had only just drawn it and the tip still faced the earth.  Link’s arms quaked just as much as hers had, but his grip on the sword remained true.  

She unhooked the slingshot, loaded it, and fired a forest nut at the Redead.  Her aim was dead-on, right in the forehead, but it didn’t have much effect on the zombie.  Zelda paused, took a moment to breathe and think, and reloaded.  She hit the lamp instead and knocked it towards the monster, the flame licking up as the lantern spun on its side.  The Redead startled just as it did the first time.  For the moment it was stunned, she sprinted forward, getting behind Link.  He raised his eyebrows, _what are you doing_?

“Saving you, hero.”  Zelda hoisted her shoulder under his elbow and shoved upwards with all of her strength.  In spite of his frozen limb, she got the sword angled higher, bit by little bit.  By then the beast was but a breath away, its mouth gaped open for one final paralyzing shriek…but the Sword Beam got to the monster first, and it was gone.  

Instantaneously Link fell over, his limbs all jelly as if he were more a chu than a man.  She buckled under his sudden weight as well, dropping to a knee.  Zelda pulled his arm around her shoulders and used herself as a wedge between him and the ground, so that he wouldn’t fall face-first into the dirt. She felt his chest against her back, and the deep, stricken gasps of air he sucked into his lungs.      

Zelda held the lantern tightly to her chest, and the glow and heat shared between them.  It didn’t burn, but it did feel like the only warm, good thing in this whole forsaken dungeon. 

“This place is awful,” she whispered to him.

He nodded.

————-

To say their journey became more cautious after that would be an exaggeration.  Any room or corridor that they encountered which they even suspected of having one got the bomb treatment before either of them would venture inside.   They blasted a particularly narrow room, and in addition to a toasted Redead, she saw that one of the walls on the left side had crumbled, revealing itself to be a false front for another corridor.  Not eager to pass through a room with even a smoked Redead, they crept into the blasted-open hole in the wall.   

She lifted her lamp and gave it some extra power, throwing the blue light far and deep ahead of them.  The wall flanking them wasn’t the same dirt wall as everywhere else, but rather white and smooth.  This was more like what the inside of a Hyrulian sacred area would be built from.

It made her wonder a moment about the nature of this crypt.  A long time ago, not only was Ganon cast away from Hyrule, but supposedly all of the poisoned lands which had fallen under his control were banished into the Underworld with him.  Now Zelda thought that maybe there had been some formerly good bits that had been sealed away too.  She looked up and saw a great painted crimson eye, set in a purple and white frame, watch over them as they walked through this narrow, dry corridor. She was unbothered, but Link saw it and shivered for a split second, and had she not caught that, he swaggered well enough that she would have otherwise had been fooled.

Her hand trailed absently over the marble wall, at least until she realized that there were systematic grooves cut into it.  She held up her hand to stop Link, and turned her lantern to the side, focusing directly on the wall itself now.

“It’s a secret language to the royal family.” Zelda never got the chance to learn from her own mother or grandmother, but her nurse had been trained, and she learned it from her.  But that had been so long ago, and Zelda had to focus to make sense of the words and the story within.

But it wasn’t as if only text told the story. Link took the lantern from her and swept its light over a twenty foot span of the wall, over fading ocher paint of trees, castles, and people.  For how stupid he could be most of the time, he scanned the glyphs quickly, his eyebrows furrowed as he seemed to infer much what Zelda could clearly read.

She once heard a tale that long ago, he was as a man, a human man, and once an ally to Hyrule.  She assumed that one of Ganon’s allies had started that rumor, to boost the opinion of their leader. The idea struck her as outrageous and disgusting, and couldn’t believe the vile, snorting villain she knew could ever hide his true nature well enough to pass as a person.  But on the wall relief, there was an image of a head with two faces, one of a man with a hawkish nose, and the other with a snarling boar.   

Below the janus was an entirely different image, a figure of a young man with a sword.  There were a collection of crests she didn’t recognize, and some indication of a journey taken.  Yet this strip of glyphs ended with the young man again, slain.  The sword he held, sharp and pristine, appeared to endure even without the youth.  Further down Zelda could make out three golden triangles and a group of images, perhaps of an eventual victory.  Much of those symbols were too close to the ground though, and had been damaged beyond understanding by water or weather.  

Link’s attention fixed on the dead man.  In studying the reliefs he looked rather thoughtful, Zelda believed, and noticed that he was glancing between the scene with the youth and the other two above and below it, like he was trying to figure out what a failed hero had anything to do with the tale. 

“Nobody would bother to engrave an image of someone who didn’t do anything important,” she said.  She brushed her fingertips over the etching of the youth.  “Perhaps even though he lost, something that he accomplished survived him.”  She turned her attention to the stone.  “I’m sure there is more to the story.  Maybe if I can get a better read of these words...”

Link looked fed up, and stamped his foot to get her attention.  He pointed to the boar head and pantomimed a very enthusiastic stabbing motion at it, then pointed to the young man with the sword.   Finally, he gestured in a broad sweeping motion to the wall as a whole, from the drawings which they could still read, to the history worn away into the dust of time.

“You think it doesn’t matter, just that whenever Ganon appears, there will always be somebody willing to smack him around.”  Zelda thought that was a bit too romantic, but whatever.  “I suppose that might be true. Besides, it can’t be so hard if even you can do it.”

 He gestured his arms into huge X’s. 

“No, I think I understood you right.” She bit down on her cheek to keep her smirk from spreading into a smile.

 ----

They found a route that took them slowly to the surface, and on it, there seemed to be no end to the monsters. 

Zelda watched the creatures, silently, as she and Link navigated through another one of the crypt's long cavern rooms.  The route they had found was narrow, another winding ledge hugging the cave walls, while she watched the undead creatures march upwards through broader, straighter paths.  Neither Stalfos nor Redead are spritely creatures, but still, at their slow pace on a straightforward path they made much more headway than the two humans.  Zelda felt more than a bit helpless, watching the creatures advance faster than they.

Sometimes, if their path came too close to the creatures, Zelda would have to ride on Link's back, since his boots made no sound at all.  She wrapped her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, so he didn't have to waste one of his arms trying to support her.  It was embarrassing at first, and she tried to remain sharp.   But his pace was so steady, and his back so warm that she fell into dozing spells, her cheek against his shoulder.  

This rhythm, this peace.  It seemed nearly a dream. 

Only when it got too still did she truly awaken.  "Why have we stopped?" she murmured, and then looked up beyond Link's shoulder.   There was only a solid brick wall ahead of them.  "Oh."

She let herself down, and pressed her hands to the wall.  The stone was very old, nearly soft to the touch.  But rock was rock, and chipping away at it with her lantern and his sword would take longer than they could spare.  She pressed her hand to her chin, but saw Link already doing something.  He cut a piece of cord from his supply and fixed it to one of his bombs.  He was lengthening a detonation wire. 

"It might destroy our walkway. And it’s going to make noise," she whispered.  He shook his head.   What else was there to do, when they couldn't return from where they came from?

He opened the door to her lantern, and put a tattered piece of cloth to the flame, and then lit the detonation wire from that.  Zelda was already backing away when he grabbed her wrist and put her by his side, flush against the wall.

With more of a thud than a boom, and the bomb did its work.  Some of their path did crumble and fall down towards oblivion, and dust clouded the air around them.     

The Stalfos heard the noise but didn't see the two humans in the dust, but the Redead sensed them.  Many of them stopped, turned, and screamed out across the void.  Zelda threw the debris out of their way with no more concern for stealth, and Link pressed his hand on her shoulder once they had a hole big enough to crawl through.  A weaker wall of plaster still trapped them, but Zelda bashed the steel base of the lantern against the old wall until it finally gave.

The wall crumbled, and Zelda dragged herself through and reached for Link’s hand to help him along.  Instead of landing in another vast cavern, like she feared, they found a narrow passageway continued up, and up, until she reached the end of it and cobbled stones met the soles of her feet.  They weren’t above ground, but the stone paths and iron gates looked more freshly laid, if only relatively so.  She thought it didn’t look totally like the dungeon they had just escaped from.

The air was muggier, more humid.  Her borrowed boots were saturating dark with stale, long-stagnant water that flowed slowly over the cobblestones.  She could hear the shambling armies of monsters somewhere close by.  The iron and stones all echoed the marching.

She didn’t speak, just continued forward with Link in silence.  Water flowed more urgently around their ankles as they walked.  Some areas to their left and right would be absolutely flooded with water, while the main walkway they used was mostly shallow, and even had some long-ago rusted over doors and gates alongside the path.  As they walked, more and more water flowed beside them as one by one, other corridors converged into this one path. 

“No.  This isn’t a crypt anymore.  It’s a well."  This realization came as her muscles cried with exhaustion.  Link's likely fared much worse, having supported her weight too for a while.  But taking a break was beyond her imagination now.  "There may be people living nearby."

He looked upwards, to where the surface must be not that much further above him.  He understood the gravity of this, at least, his brow furrowed and lips pursed.   She said out loud what she was sure was on his mind too.

“We have to cut them off,” she said.  “We can’t let those monsters escape.”          

\----

An explosion ripped through the narrow pass behind Zelda and Link.  They were prepared for it, their palms over their ears, though to be honest neither of them had been sure how devastating the blast would be.  Ten bombs at once was a new record. 

She coughed and waved away the dust.  That was shockingly easy.  At a sprint, she and Link beat the monsters and found the mouth of the dungeon first, and with the last of his bomb stash, buried the passageway it so they couldn’t escape-

A hand shot out of the pile of dirt.  Redead wails were dampened, but still very real, on the other side of the corridor.  Zelda felt the threat of paralysis surge through her. 

Both Link and Zelda skittered back, turned, and again sprinted dead on towards the end of the corridor.  For a moment she nearly panicked, thinking they hit a dead end.  But straight iron rungs were spaced evenly up the stone wall, and as they craned their necks, for the first time in over a day they could see the deep indigo night sky.   

Zelda slid her lantern to the crook of her elbow and got a head start up the rungs, climbing as fast as her arms could take her.  She heard Sword Beams from below for a minute and saw some flashes of pink light, until that ended and she glanced down to see Link rapidly climbing and gaining on her. 

Their great demolition plan worked terribly.  Stalfos and Redead crowded the circular bottom of the well, like piranhas.  But they were behind her.  She sucked in deep breaths and just focused on the sky above…

“Good evening, Princess and Hero!” boomed a familiar voice. The Stalfos General Daeder waved from the cobbled lid of the well, like a friendly neighbor.  His glowing golden eyes bore down on them, and his fat hooded skull obscured the sky above.  “How did you like my home sweet home?” 

“Let us through, monster, or you’ll regret it,” Zelda warned.   

The skeleton general laughed richly at that. “I will regret it?  Now I’m just a pile of old bones talking here…” he said, and leaned over the lip of the well, “but I think you’re about to meet with a terrible fate.”

Zelda looked down.  Bones clattered and clanked and scraped against rock, and she saw the Stalfos start to abandon the well’s bottom and climb upwards.  Like a swarm of spiders, Stalfos were rearranging their bodies and climbing up the walls of the well.  Their thin fingers perfectly jabbed into the spaces between the old stones. 

“Who can get up here first?  The hero, or my bone soldiers?”  The general laughed, his flapping jaw clapping like castanets.  “Ganon promised me rule of Hyrule’s night, so I could raid all of the towns and cities with my army as I please.  And all I have to do is deliver the Triforce our hero has on him.” 

“As if Ganon’s promises mean anything,” Zelda said.  “He’ll trick you, you know.”    

The General laughed again.  “Even so!  At worst I’ll have all my soldiers above the ground again, and you _permanently below it_!”   He pulled away from the well, so she couldn’t see him anymore, but Zelda could still hear his laughing echoing.

The Stalfos gained on them.  A skeleton skull snapped its jaw at her, and she batted it out of the way with her lamp.  She reached for the next iron rung as a bony hand grabbed her ankle and nearly caused her to slip completely.  Link kicked at the two Stalfos at his own legs, and one of them even ripped the boot off of his foot.  He swung his legs apart, and then snapped them back together, and the pieces of the two Stalfos flew everywhere.  But where those two monsters had fallen apart, more crept up to replace them.  

He looked up at Zelda, and something seemed to flash in his eyes.  He grabbed a rib bone off of a nearby Stalfos, then jabbed the tip of it against a rock between himself and Zelda.  He kept his stare on her so she would know not to look away.

“What are you doing?”   She couldn’t help the panic creep into her voice - there were so many Stalfos after them, and she was losing out on upper arm strength.  “Link-”

He dragged the bone across the stone, leaving behind a white chalky dust.  It was crude and rough, but she realized that he drew a symbol for her. 

Fire.

She held her iron bar tight.  For a moment, she thought of her lantern not as a bashing device, but as the light-giver and fire-maker.  It surged to flames the size of her fist, but only for a moment before another Stalfos grabbed at her arms.  Then again, she got the light big only to be attacked again.  She couldn’t focus long enough to get more than a match’s worth of fire alight. 

She looked at Link for any more bright ideas.  He was occupied, bashing at a Stalfos with the butt of his sword.  The tip faced away from him, but shone with a pale pink sheen.

“At me!  Link, point the sword at me!”

He looked at her in total horror for a moment, but she threw open the glass door to the lantern, and he understood what she meant.  He elbowed a Stalfos skull out of his way, then climbed a rung higher and leveled a Sword Beam at her lantern.  As she hoped, the glass of the magic lamp didn’t break, and the flame devoured the new source of energy greedily.  Its hue even went from blue to a violet.

“One more Beam, Link!"  Her hand seized the final rung from the top.  Fresh air filled her lungs, nearly as shocking as inhaling cold water.  All she focused on was her lamp.

“What’s that?  It doesn’t sound like you are dead yet,” the General asked, leaning over the side.  His golden orb eyes flickered with impatience.  “What _are_ you doing?” 

“Telling you what we think of your house party.”  She held up the lantern again, and Link aimed at it, his sword's magic hitting true once more.  As the General stared at the pink lamp in confusion, Zelda snapped it back, then swung it in a wide arc, underhanded, and cracked the lamp through his jaw in a devastating uppercut.  The roaring flame eagerly leapt from her lamp and ripped through the undead general.  

The lantern fire ate his cloak instantly, exposing his bones to the early morning sun.  Pink fire swept over the rest of him as he stood paralyzed.  He stared at Zelda in total surprise, until the sword’s magic did its work and finally phased him away to the Evil Jar.  Presumably as a pile of bones.

Zelda, panting out of exhausted and the sudden adrenaline high, braced her lamp for another attack to the remaining Stalfos soldiers, but what life that animated the Stalfos and Redead seemed to be draining from them.  Stalfos were freezing in place, and then falling from where they had been climbing the sides of the well, while the Redead lingering at the bottom just seemed to fall apart into ooze.  Purple mist rose up as the monsters liquefied, with the gas so thick that she couldn’t see the ground at the bottom of the well anymore.

She didn’t even want to think about the bottom of the well, so far down below them.  His hand just gripped the second rung from the top. 

"Almost there, Link,” she whispered, and extended her hand to him. 

A Stalfos, making use of its last bit of borrowed life, leapt from the opposite side of the well and onto Link’s back.  His hand missed Zelda’s, and she clearly remembered the moment of seeing his brown eyes go wide.  Then he grabbed her ankle, but couldn’t get purchase, and let go just as fast.  

His full weight for just that moment yanked Zelda hard downwards.  Next thing she knew, her chin collided with the next iron rung, and she slid off of one bar before she managed to hook her elbows over the side of the next one down.  She tasted blood from her lip, and her skull rang with pain.  It took her a few disoriented moments to look around for him, to see how many rungs he had got knocked down.

“Link?”  He wasn’t below her.  She couldn’t see him at all.  _“Link!”_

\----

When she finally made it to the bottom, all traces of the monsters had vanished, and the fog of miasma already rolled back into the aqueduct.  It left only one thing behind.

Zelda all but fell the last few yards from the ladder to the ground.  Despite the hard fall she scrambled up, dragged herself towards him.  She touched his hair, and his face.  He looked like he was asleep. 

“I’m sorry, Link, I’m so sorry.  I couldn’t reach you.”  His skin was cold, but she wouldn’t believe it, no.  “Please, Link, I’m here now...” 

She leaned over him, her hand trembling as she moved it over his heart. “I’m sorry.  I expected too much from you, and never really thanked you for any of it.  You did your best to protect me, even if I didn’t want it and didn’t appreciate it.  And now...  

“You are my hero.  That’s all you ever have to be.”  She kissed his brow, cheek; put her hand to his jaw all in quick, fleeting touches.  She hadn’t given a thought to where her errant mouth landed, upon his lips for a lingering kiss, begging for him to feel if only a fraction of her breaking heart.        

Link was beyond feeling anything at all.

She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, and two small, burning tears rolling off her cheeks and into his tunic.  Her hands found his, and held them tight.  “Just stay with me,” she begged. 

His magic bag hung open at his hip, and when she leaned her weight on him, the tiny, dirty little bottle picked up from far, far back in the dungeon rolled back out.  Outside of its bag, the bottle slowly returned to full size.  Zelda didn’t notice it at all, not even when the fragile bottle cracked against a stone and crumbled open, and a tiny speck of light fluttered free of it.

The little glow of light wandered for a moment, and then fluttered in her direction, casting a warm light on Link’s body.  Zelda lifted her face to see the glowing creature.  Beautiful as this little fairy was, more delicate and even tinier than the fairies of Hyrule she knew, Zelda could only regard the red-pink fae impassively. 

“Princess,” she said warmly, touching Zelda’s hair.  “I’m glad I lived to see you again.”

Zelda couldn’t muster any awe of the fairy, or curiosity, or even anger.  With Link’s cold hands in her own, there was nothing she could feel now. “Go away.”

“Do not despair, dear one,” the fae said, so gently.  “As you’ve found here, there are realms in this land which are cursed.  There are also ones which are sacred.”  The fairy glimmered in the sunlight, which just starting to center over the well’s top.  “And this delicate mortal world in the middle, it is yours to protect.”     

The old fairy floated above Link, hovering but inches over his chest.  She smiled at Zelda, and curtsied politely. 

“You have nothing to mourn, princess.  For Hyrule is a beautiful realm, even in deepest ruin.  Because it alone is the land of second chances.”

The fairy spun as a dancer would, and then disappeared, her magic and vitality dissolving into a small shower of bright red particles.  Zelda shook her head, not convinced that she had seen anything but a delusion. Yet she realized that her chin didn’t hurt like it did before.  Her heart stopped next, though, because Link’s hands were becoming warmer within her own.  

“Link?”  She let go of his hands.  His lips moved barely, his eyes fluttered, his chest expanded…   

And suddenly, he gasped.  His upper body jolted upright, like a sleeper startled awake.  He doubled over himself and coughed for a few moments, and eventually smacked his chest with his own fist until he had himself together.  

“Zelda?”  He looked around, and saw the broken bottle and the light of the well exit high above them.  “What’s going on?  How did we get down here?”

She buried her face against his chest.  Zelda didn’t cry, told herself not to, but she did hold fast to the sides of his tunic for some long moments further, until she was satisfied with the sound of his beating heart.  She had to be certain that she wasn’t just dreaming him back to life.

Eventually, she let go of him, and slid backwards to give him some space.  She clapped her hands on her pants, and smoothed out her hair quickly.

“Nothing happened,” she finally answered, folding her hands.   

“Uh.”  He looked her over, extremely not convinced by her lie.  He might have pursued it, but instead he pointed up.  “Whatever.  Let’s get out of here.”

\----

For some time, the princess and hero laid sprawled on the ground not two feet from the well, staring at the sunny sky as if they had never seen it before.  There were still some problems that remained, like how his feather boots were gone, and they had no supplies between them.   But without complaint, they eventually picked themselves up, and started wandering down the first official-looking road they could find.  Hell if either of them knew what part of Hyrule they were in, or which direction to take.  Though if they were desperately misplaced, at least there would be plenty of time for Link to fill in his side of the story. 

“You were making your way back to the city when I found you,” Zelda said.  “Were you coming back home because you were pursued by Stalfos?”  

“No, actually.  The zombie parade came only as I got close to town. An added bonus, it seems.”

She pulled nervously at her fingers behind her back.  “I see.  I had assumed they had been chasing you for a while.” 

“I wish,” he muttered.  “I was heading back because _someone_ put a silencing curse on me while I was traveling, and I need a fix.”

“Ganon?”

“No, _you!”_ he exclaimed, his finger pointing with his accusation.  He wasn’t pointing at Zelda though.  He was pointing just above and behind her, to a pixie girl fluttering in hiding behind a branch.

“Whoops, busted,” she squeaked.

“Spryte?”

“You have a lot of explaining to do!”  Link shouted, shaking his fist at the little princess.  

“The fairies heard about the trouble out here, and look, I find you guys instead!”  Spryte fluttered up, perching herself on a high branch for a moment.  “So, when are you going to thank me for finding you two?  Everyone in the kingdom was out looking for you.” 

“Don’t ignore me!” Link warned, but Spryte did just that, hovering above Zelda’s head instead.  

“Is that true, that you cursed him?” Zelda asked, a bit more gently.  “But why would you do that to Link?”

“Well duh.  Because the idiot up and abandoned the two fairest ladies in Hyrule.  He had it coming.”  The fairy princess lifted her chin high, and sticking her hands on her hips.  “But I also did it as a favor to you, Zelda.”

“I didn’t tell you to do anything like that!” 

“Nope!  But I was told by your dad to cheer you up, and that’s exactly what I did.  I totally thought you would have fun with him like that.” Spryte hovered a safe few feet up in the air. “But it seems like you were too prissy to get the joke.”

Zelda stared at the fairy, dumbfounded.  “ _Joke_?”

“ _Fun_?”   Link huffed mightily and jabbed his thumb at his chest.  “Listen short-stuff, I’ve had to do a lot of not-fun things in my life, but that was the least fun thing _ever_.  In case you didn’t know, we just had to escape from Ganon’s territory.  I’m talking about zombies and ghosts and invisible floors everywhere, shoes that I thought would kill me and skeletons all over the place?  It was so bad, I was _missing_ the usual hordes of Moblins with their arrow guns and fire magic and ugly pig-dog faces.  I’m in the mood to take Ganon out for a date at this point.”  He stopped, sucked in a deep breath, and then finished. “And you know, I could have really used my voice that whole time.”

The fairy lifted her eyebrow. “You made it out alive, so obviously not.”

“It was _hard,_ got it?"  And he then pointed at the princess.  “Worst of all, Zelda was mouthing off at me constantly, and I couldn’t say anything to defend my honor.”  

" _Me?”_ She crossed her arms. “I wasn't doing that.  Besides, it's not like there's a single word in the Hyrulian language that can come out of your mouth and improve your honor.”

“- _As I said_ , I was dealing with Zelda ragging on me non-stop.  And on top of all of that, my boots are totally busted, my socks are full of holes, my tunic smells like toxic sludge, and I haven’t had a hot meal or a warm bed in weeks-”

She planted her hands on her hips, completely exasperated with his egotistical, whining, childlike behavior.  "Well _excuuuuse_ me, hero, but leaving the castle in the first place was your choice, or did you forget about that?" 

Zelda regarded him strictly, expecting some kind of apology out of him.  She didn't even realize she said anything strange until Spyte sharply snorted with laughter.   

The hero in question grimaced sourly.  “That sounded real annoying.”  

Her expression softened.  "It does, doesn't it?"   But this wasn’t what she wanted their relationship to always be, a vicious back-and–forth of bickering.  Zelda knotted her hands together in front of her chest, and bowed her head slightly.  “Actually. I meant to say that I’m sorry.”

“Well, that’s not like her~” Spyte said, and fluttered ahead. 

Link was the one who actually hesitated though.  “Zelda?”

“Back there, you know.  I messed up.”

“So I heard.”  The corner of his mouth twitched in a smirk.   

Zelda laced her fingers together, and tried not to roll her eyes.  She wasn’t sure if he even deserved this, but maybe she’d throw him a bone just this once.  “Great Hero.  You’ve done Hyrule a great service by protecting the Triforce of Wisdom while you were traveling.  You deserve my thanks, as well as any wish which I can grant.”

He looked wary of her act, and set his hands on his hips.  “Yeah, sure. Even a kiss?”

She had been willing to kiss him before, but this time it was a little different, and her lips pursed into a small, shy smile.  “You know, Link, all you’ve ever had to do was ask.”

That brightened his face up. “Well! Then I have one hell of a question for you!”

He put his hands on her shoulders, and with just that gentle pressure, Link compelled her a step closer to him.  She almost didn’t know what to do, but she allowed herself the bravery of staring back into his dark eyes, which for the life of her, Zelda had thought she could never understand.  But maybe she understood a little better now.  Link wasn’t the knight she always imagined, and that might be okay.  Because where he wasn’t disciplined, he was clever, and where he wasn’t a gentleman, he was earnest and brave.  Most of all, even if it was just for new socks and a warm bed at the castle, he had come back to her. 

Link smirked, his expression nearly dumb with his anticipation and excitement, and he opened his mouth to make his request of the fair princess...

 …Except no actual sound came out. He paused, startled, and then put his hands to his throat again.

Spryte turned away from him and brushed her hands together as if rubbing off dirt, except that she clapped out faint glimmers of gold.  The fairy giggled as she fluttered high and far out of Link’s flailing reach, and Zelda winked back at her.

“I think I get the joke now, Spryte.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> As the weapons and setting probably suggested, it was really important for me to, in this story, establish the Legend of Zelda cartoon in the Zelda timeline. Of course this series wouldn't be included in the Hyrule Historia, but I wanted to give it at least an honorary spot - I place it between Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past, with the idea that the cartoon takes place just before the Sealing War (because the cartoon Zelda is really a super BAMF and would be a fantastic leader in a war). 
> 
> This may not be a cute story, and it's certainly not as lighthearted as the show, but I had a wonderful time writing it. I very much enjoyed taking a fandom that is considered ridiculous and silly, and go ahead and treat it with gravity. Song that goes with this fic is "Sweet Nothing" by Calvin Harris, repeated about a billion times as I wrote this.
> 
> Thank you to my beta reader, who has been a huge source of emotional and grammatical support to me.


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